crying in the bleachers | slay v adepti v niko, day 5

Actions speak louder than words. It's why Francine has stayed quiet since last night, wrapped up in Autumn's motherly embrace. She'd crawled back to her in the night, nestling her head underneath the girl's outstretched arms. She bathed in moonlight, she bathed in Autumn. She smelled lovely, despite all the blood and sweat and tears shed. Like soap mixed with the earth, like laundry days in spring. She felt like a comfort Francine had never experienced before - and if Francine was going to die, she might as well get a taste of what it felt like to be cared for.

Still, she cried. For Adan. For Steele. But Autumn let her, until she fell asleep with tears on her cheeks and woke up to clear skies and the chilling bite of mountain air. Sunlight thawed out her freezing hands, dried her tears. Her legs felt like lead, her back ached, her arms exhausted from hauling that damn katana around - but still she climbed the mountain.

High ground seemed wise - vantage point. There were just two of them now - Francine and Autumn, little girls lost without their fighters in stead. But the vastness of the mountain gave the youngest a sweet sense of comfort, allowing herself to breathe for a moment. The wind picked up, swirling around them, she hears Adan. Steele. Ghosts all around her. Screaming, crying, dying.

(her screams weren’t lost on the wind. i heard every one.)

Everything hurts, but her heart sings and her pace quickens. Her ghosts, her ghosts - they had just gotten lost in the chaos. Floating higher, up to safety, hiding. She had found them again, smiling giddy - stupid grin, skipping forward ahead of Autumn, laughing. Her seelies follow, singing and chirping in the breeze.

(death is only temporary.)

Francine comes to a stop, waits for Autumn, closes her eyes. Deep breath in, (every breath, the potential to be our last. savor them.) Out, in, out, in.

When she opens her eyes her breath catches in her throat. What follows is something horrid choked out, rage and regret. Blonde hair catching in the wind - a boy stands ahead of them but she doesn't see him. Not really. All she sees is that wisp of yellow and a name curls around her heart, squeezing tight.

Svetlana.

"YOU!"

This time her fists won't cut it, so she takes up her blade in one hand and points at her forest sister with another. Wisp vanishes, as does Bubbleboy, sensing the fight in her. Honourary Forrester, she nearly spits at the memory. How desperately she had wanted to be one of them, just like her, back home in Seven. How deluded she was. How stupid. How-

childish. Little Francine, too small to save Adan or Steele. Not big enough, not strong enough.

Little Francine no more, she roars at Svetlana something violent. Swings.

As it turned out, the latest of my many, many failures since coming here wasn't yet enough to sway Francine's opinion of me, or Bambi's, for that matter. Another day, another dress. Though, this one was... certainly more risque than anything I would've ever imagined myself in. The neckline especially: strands of rubies stretching out from the center of my neck against white fabric, like my throat had been spilled open for all the world to see. The accompanying message made it clear that this really was my last shot, but I personally didn't think it was good enough to be true. The Capitol needed its spill of blood as ever, and now that there was only Francine and I against the world, the world could've come and slain me at any point.

I'd tried to do more than need saving. I'd tried. And now I couldn't so much as close my eyes without seeing Adan's crumbling face in my dreams, or hearing Steele's screams on every breeze. All I was good at, it seemed, was ruining some of the most expensive gowns I'd ever get the pleasure of seeing.

The cut on my forehead healed into a grotesque, jagged scab which kept getting caught in my hair. As the morning wore on, it only got worse and long before even so much as noon, my scalp burned and I worried the stitching might come lose. I asked Francine if we could slow up a bit, and it wasn't long after that when death came for us again.

At first, I thought maybe Francine was just trying to be... her version of funny, maybe, as she scurried forward. It was only when I saw her raise her sword that I even noticed the others at all.

They already killed one of us, Elm and company. Svetlana was alive and well, which was a real pity, but it at least gave me the opportunity to follow through on one promise I made in this place-

"Ran into the boy from One yesterday. You were right: he does like talkin, doesn't he?"

I recognized the boy from Eight from before, but instead of the Hope girl, there was another boy with them who I didn't recognize. I was starting to feel pretty doomed when I realized he seemed more threatened by the three of them than the two of us, and then I understood he must've been some poor sap who'd happened to be nearby enough to get caught in the crosshairs of the gamemakers as they sniped our alliance out one by one.

I looked to Elm, this time with my jaw set. My dang bottom lip puckers out the slightest bit, and I can feel the edges of my mouth trying their best to tug down into a frown, but I won't let them. If it was too late then, it was too late now. It hurt, but in order to get back home I had to let go of the notion that the two of us could ever somehow be on the same side again. Not now, not after everything. But I thought we could've been friends, maybe. If things had been different.

Svetlana's hit took all the colors from my sight except white for a moment- I couldn't stop myself from screaming in pain as the blade ripped through my hands as they attempted to protect me in vain. She called it nothing personal: hunted and the hunters. I thought, are some people truly better for the world dead? Svetlana certainly would've seemed much more interesting as a memory.

I didn't know what it was that was coming over me, but it felt something like rage.

We've been over this.

Francine's knuckles burn, alight with the memory. Adan's death so fresh in her mind, in her heart, in the swing of a closed fist. Rage against the fact that her friend was gone at the hands of someone she had looked up to. Envied. Adored. Trusted, perhaps - even just for a moment, strange girls telling stories over a campfire in the Capitol.

How foolish of her to think violent forest creatures like Francine could ever be anything but out for themselves.

And the worst part is, deep down, underneath all of that anger and guilt and fear - yes, fear, she is terrified. She is small. She understands. Svetlana Forrester is only doing what any outcast would do in a game of survival. They are mirror images, Svetlana and Francine. Maybe that's why she hates to look at her up close this way.

Svet lurches toward Autumn and strikes, but Francine's last friend holds her own. No, she thinks. Adan, too heavy as a glaive pierces his chest. Steele, blonde hair in the wind as her body is lifted into the sky. Autumn, wrapped around her in a hug - nothing but kindness. Nothing but beautiful, inside and out.

No. Not again. Not again.

We've been over this - what was it Francine had thought yesterday, launching herself at Autumn for comfort?

That's right: actions speak louder than words.

Svetlana's desperate attempts to carry on a conversation with a child who had no interest: sad. Doing it while attacking me instead: pathetic. "If you're gonna try to kill me," I said through gritted teeth, "then stop talkin to her." My eyes didn't budge from Svetlana.

"Notice how she has nothin to say to you?"

There was no loyalty left between them. No more than Elm and I. But I refused to be attacked by people who didn't have the decency to act right. If that was really how she felt, she'd be trying to kill Francine right now, but she continued attacking me. Why? Well, I couldn't say I knew her well enough, but I knew people just like her. Way I figured it, Svetlana Forrester had probably been shouting into the wilderness for as long as she had lungs the words 'I matter!', hoping that some day someone other than her might believe it. But the sad truth is that girls like her only had to say stuff like that so often because there wasn't anyone else to say it for em. That was either because they had no one who cared, or because it wasn't true.

My eyes cut to Elm in time to see them mouth an apology. I didn't blink. I also didn't speak, which said plenty. Notice how I have nothin to say to you, too?

It was so strange, because as alive as I felt inside- lit up like a fire- my body disagreed.

I opened my mouth to speak and instead a long, involuntary groan of pain was all I could muster as I picked myself back up. Even exhaling hurt now, thanks to the sizable cut across my chest. The red rubies blended with the blood; the dress looked somehow more complete.

"You ain't anything special, Svetlana. You're no better than her or me. You ain't the first Forrester, you're not a career- you ain't even the scariest thing to try and kill us in the past twenty-four hours. You're just-"

Breathless sob, I forced myself steady.

"You're just a weirdo."

It might've made her better at killing than me, but I knew that I was better at living than she would ever be.

"I just want you to promise me that when it's down to the wire, you'll think about yourself."

Francine looks at Svet, to Autumn, Autumn (isn't the moon lovely?) - brave, kind, lovely Autumn. Back to Svet, snarls. (betrayal is simply another mean of survival.) Snakes in the grass, on the forest floor, at the peak of a mountain. (blood is sweeter than wine. go ahead. have a taste.)

"Shut up!" she spits, at the ghosts, at Svetlana, her arms shaking from the strain of it all. (eirik, eirik, eirik, eirik.) Her muscles, coiled tight, energy depleting with every breath. The past five days takes a toll on her famished body and Francine doesn't want to admit that Svet is wrong - yet right.

Steele, Adan, Autumn;
(let's just not kill each other.)

(can you try to save me anyway, autumn?)

(i need you to know it ain't your fault.)

And then there will just be Francine, ghosts and all.

"Shut up, shut up, shUT UP!"